“Horde of piratical monkeys” creates LimeWire: Pirate Edition

Only weeks after a federal injunction against LimeWire, a group of mischievous …

After a years-long battle with LimeWire, the recording industry finally scuppered the pirate ship last month, obtaining a wide-ranging injunction against LimeWire LLC and its file-sharing software. LimeWire devs were bound by the court to remove their software downloads and source code from the Web, and they had to take steps to break existing LimeWire installations. But two weeks later, LimeWire is back.

LimeWire Pirate Edition builds on the old LimeWire codebase, but it removes LimeWire's use of some centralized servers, the Ask.com toolbar, in-app advertising, and software backdoors. It also enables all the features of the "Pro" version that LimeWire LLC used to sell as a premium product.

According to the coders behind the release, "A horde of piratical monkeys climbed aboard the abandoned ship, mended its sails, polished its cannons and released it FREE to the community to help keep the Gnutella network alive."

Ars contacted the project's leader, a hacker who goes by the name MetaPirate. Why had he decided to tweak the recording industry in such a public fashion? "Speaking for myself, the motivation is to make RIAA lawyers cry into their breakfast cereal," he said by e-mail. "I hope the other monkeys have nobler intentions."

The Pirate Edition

The Pirate Edition coders plan to release their work as open source software once they can find a robust repository for the code, and Mac and Linux versions of the new software are expected in the near future.

LimeWire has been forked in the past, branching into other P2P apps like FrostWire, but MetaPirate would rather work on his new project than contribute to FrostWire. For one thing, there's the symbolic middle finger to the RIAA: "You can spend years and millions of dollars knocking something down, and it will just get back up. Not an equivalent, not a replacement, but the exact same thing. The Pirate Bay has really demonstrated the importance of that."

For another, there's LimeWire's name recognition, and its visual identity. "LimeWire and FrostWire have different features and different visual styles," said MetaPirate. "More diversity means happier users and a more robust network. It's not a zero-sum game."

LimeWire LLC has been crippled, with a trial on damages set to take place early next year. But the software at issue still runs wild on the Internet, and MetaPirate is determined not to let the LimeWire name die. All of which explains his tagline for the Pirate Edition: "You can't keep a good app down."